When it comes to online video marketing, Video SEO or using any kind of visual ploy to market your business, the platform that you should be leveraging is most definitely YouTube. Why this should be so, is something that does not even warrant an explanation, because, well, you know. Just look around you.
Here are fifteen tips to help you and get you started on the process:
1) Create and Customize Your Channel
The first is obviously to create a channel of your own. This will also help with the branding side of things. Customize your channel in such a way that your best videos get featured all the time. This will be like putting your best face forward all the time.
Above all, make sure you cross the below factors off your setup checklist.
Add a channel trailer
Describe your channel
Add web links
Add Channel Art
2) Choose the Best Thumbnail Image
While you’re only allowed to pick from three randomly generated thumbnails for your video, make sure you pick the one that best depicts the content. Believe it or not, the thumbnail you choose will heavily influence whether your video gets clicked on or not, so choose very wisely.
3) Put Keywords Everywhere
When it comes to promoting your business on YouTube, the importance of keywords cannot be emphasized enough. Keywords, quite literally are the key. Expectedly, getting the keywords right is the best possible way for people to find your videos and for this reason you need to insert keywords everywhere, in the title of the video, the description and the tags.
You can get a better understanding of your targeted keywords through either the YouTube keywords tool or through the Google Keyword Planner.
4) Take a gander at the popular videos within your niche
Once you know what the popular videos are, you can try and incorporate the same keywords in your own videos. The only thing to make sure is that these are related to your business. As part of promoting your business, your videos should tie in with the services that you are offering. Otherwise the whole purpose is lost.
5) Invest time in referencing and researching
Keep a thorough eye on the popular channels with subscribers to see what it is that is making them tick. Use this research towards directing your own video content.
6) Add Your Website’s URL to the Description
Your website URL should feature in all videos and uploads. Place your website’s link in the descriptions section so that people who like your videos can later check your site too.
7) Be interactive
Being an active participant is very important. Make sure you encourage relevant discussions on your posts and respond to them in a timely manner. If you have a community going, make sure you lay down the rules for the community to follow.
8) Call for actions play a big role
Don’t be shy to ask people to engage with other channels and share your videos. One of the biggest advantages of YouTube is the casualness and the ability to directly reach out to your audience, so capitalize on that.
9) Be subtle
Don’t get too aggressive about your promotion or too blatant as this can be a major put off. Toe the line carefully, engage and interest your audience, build a relationship with them and then gently nudge them to check out your product and services.
10) Promote Your Videos
Success on YouTube, like any other marketing channel, requires effort and a lot of patience before you see actual results. You have to work hard consistently to build your profile and when you do, you’ll begin to see the rewards of your effort. Remember, there’s a lot of work that goes into achieving ‘virality’.
This bullet is an off-shoot of the last one, but it deserves its own space. So anyway, our point is, if your objective is to garner visibility, then don’t be an island.
To be sure, YouTube is a social platform, so spend a little while checking out other content on the site, ‘favorite’ appropriate videos and make suitable YouTube “friends.”
If you really can’t, or don’t want to associate your company with other companies or individuals, and then think wider. For instance, why not look at content or channels that cover your local area or that are for a good cause that you/your company support? Remember, your associations will send a very clear message about the values at your company.
As well as engaging with other users, be sure to stay updated with YouTube’s own news. The site goes through some fairly major changes from time to time and adds new features on a regular basis, so it’s well worth following the official YouTube blog, at the very least, to be kept up to date with site and community news.
12) Gain subscribers through annotations
Did you know that you can add annotations with clickable CTA’s to your YouTube videos? It’s a handy tip passed down from Social Media Examiner.
The annotations help you with repurposing older videos with obsolete information, where, instead of deleting the older video, you simply create a new one with a link embedded on the original video pointing to the new one. (It’s really not as complicated as it sounds!)
13) Cross-Promote Your Videos
This one’s a no-brainer, folks. Your audience won’t know you exist until you tell them you’re around. If you want those engagement and traffic numbers reaching higher, then now is not the time to be shy. Cross-promote your videos on other Social Media channels and make sure you allow those videos to be shared and/or embedded by other viewers. You give a little, you get back a lot.
14) Use Google Plus for Comments
So, YouTube is the latest Google product to fold G+ commenting into its fold. Yes, they’re taking over the world but we knew that already, right?
Here, take a look,
Key Features of this change
Relevant comments from video creators, influencers and active discussions and people in your G+ circles will be more readily available in the beginning. Switch from ‘Top Comments’ to ‘Newest First.’
· Public or private participation in conversations.
· More user-friendly comment moderation. You’ll be able to review comments before they go live, set up an auto-approve or even filter certain words.
15) Advanced In-built Analytics Feature
YouTube allows you to view visitor’s data via a Line Chart, a Multi-Line Chart, compare performance metrics and determine trends through a stacked area. You can also view visitor data via interactive maps and look at traffic sources and access engagement reports. Data samples include:
• Subscribers report
• Likes and Dislikes report
• Favorites report
• Comments report
• Sharing report
• Annotations report
• Call-to-Action report
Not too shabby, eh? View the complete list of features at the YouTube Analytics Guides.
The Conclusion
Marketing and promotion in any form require strategy and structure and video marketing on YouTube is no different. With the right attitude (yes, it helps), focus and a concrete plan, a successful campaign can be launched, managed and success can be achieved.
What do you think? What helped you gain a wider audience on YouTube when you wanted to promote your videos?
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